Just as you would never build a house without a blueprint, you should never build software without designing and prototyping your product first. This phase is not about creating pages and pages of useless documentation—it's about creating a product with the best possible User Experience. In the end, you will not only know exactly what your product will look like but how users will interact with it and how your development team should make it all work.

Key Elements Include:

• Visioning Sessions: Information gathering, brainstorming, research, strategies, business validation and analysis.
• Information Architecture: Card sorting, site architecture, taxonomies, screen inventories, visual hierarchies, task flow diagrams and wireframes.
• Usability Testing and Evaluations: Test scripts and scenarios, user tests and hueiristic evaluations.
• Visual Design: Mockups depicting the look and feel, style, branding and enhanced user experience.
• HTML/CSS Prototype: An interactive, non-functional user interface that enable users to walk-through key features of the software product while giving development teams a solid front-end foundation for their technical specification and back-end development.
• Technical Specification: A development team's instruction manual that clearly articulates and defines exactly how each piece of functionality should work.